


The So-Called Good Guys

by bomberqueen17



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Bucky Barnes Feels, Bucky Barnes Needs a Hug, Bucky Barnes Returns, Bucky Contemplates Career Changes, Don't Trust Acronyms, It's Just AOU-Compliant, Justified Paranoia, M/M, Paranoia, Steve POV, Steve Rogers Needs a Hug, Steve Rogers and the 21st Century, Stucky Secret Santa 2015, This Is Not Tony Stark Hate, shield is hydra
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-28
Updated: 2015-12-28
Packaged: 2018-05-10 00:29:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,665
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5561831
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bomberqueen17/pseuds/bomberqueen17
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“I’m the Fist of Hydra,” Bucky said, sounding a bit smug about it.</p>
<p>In which Bucky comes back and isn't willing to change careers just yet-- until he is. This is as holiday-sweet as I could manage to be. </p>
<p>For Stucky Secret Santa 2015-- my recipient is @kendrasaunderses on Tumblr! If you have an AO3 name I'll make this a gift link to you, if not, I'll just leave it as is.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The So-Called Good Guys

 

Steve stood out on the porch for a while and watched the sunset over the lake. This place was a bit precious for his tastes, but Natasha had assured him that it was nice. She’d kind of pointedly encouraged him to take a weekend off, and he’d resisted until the other day, when he’d noticed that he’d actually dented the arms of the chair he was sitting in.

Before she could recruit Maria Hill to get on his case too, Steve had smoothly informed everyone that he was taking a couple days and he’d see them all next Tuesday.

She’d been at his office before him, and had already had the screen up with this place on it. He’d considered resisting, but, well. It all seemed a bit much. Fine. He’d let her make the choice.

As the kids nowadays said, _whatever_.

Someone was canoeing across the lake, which was lovely. It was the first thing in a long time that had stirred him to draw. It made such a beautiful silhouette, the dark shape of the canoe and the V of the wake on the still, flat water, illuminated in fiery colors as the sun sank behind the trees.

Yeah okay. It was pretty.

It wasn’t really helping, but it was better than gazing grimly out at the NYC skyline and feeling helpless, he supposed.

He watched until the canoe disappeared, then went inside with his now-cold mug of tea. He hadn’t bothered getting beer, it didn’t do him any good anyway.

He set the mug down in the sink of the little kitchenette, then went into the living room, at a bit of a loss. Why had he come here alone? He really didn’t need more alone time.

People always seemed to think he’d want to be alone. He really didn’t particularly want to be. It left too much time for thinking, and regret.

He went into the bedroom, where he’d left his luggage, and hauled his laptop out, because who didn’t travel with a laptop? He sure wasn’t going to be at the mercy of whatever network TV they got at this place.

There was wifi, though. He’d checked that before he’d agreed to this place. He wasn’t crazy.

He sat on the couch and booted the laptop up, and poked aimlessly around for a little bit. What do people do on vacation, he wondered. He could go to bed early, maybe, but for real. Why the fuck was he in solitude in the wilderness again? It was pretty, but stupid.

He resolved to do the most un-Captain-Americanly thing he could think of, and set his browser to incognito, and searched for gay porn. Because why the fuck not. He kept letting people’s expectations shape his actions, and it was not only stupid, it was also boring.

 

About 15 minutes later he decided that jerking off on the couch was less comfortable than the bed, so he went in and unmade the pristine bed, took all his clothes off, and rolled around in it a little. He found a decent full-length video of a really enthusiastic blowjob, and watched the whole thing, then rewound to one crucial couple of seconds where the one guy swallowed the other guy’s dick and let his eyes roll back and looked like he was really into it. That did the trick, and Steve let himself make a little noise when he came, for once, because this was apparently vacation and he was living a little.

He felt a little better then. Maybe lame, maybe stupid, but at least he’d enjoyed himself for fifteen seconds.

It made him sleepy, so he went and took a shower, and then got in bed and conked out. One day of vacation down, two to go.

He dreamed that the shower was running, but he woke just enough to realize he was in an unfamiliar place, and it must be that the neighboring room’s shower was running. It wasn’t until an unspecified amount of time had passed in the unaccustomed total darkness that he woke again to the realization that there _was_ no neighboring room. This was a freestanding cabin. Someone had been in his shower.

He woke up, instantly fully-alert, but there was no sound of the shower running now. There was no sound at all, nothing out of place in this unusually totally-silent place.

There was definitely someone in the cabin, there had to be.

Steve collected himself, but as he did suddenly someone said, “Shh, don’t get excited.”

“What now?” Steve asked drily, prepared to fight for his life. Of course he was naked. That’s what happened the one time he decided to sleep naked.

“I think we gotta talk about your taste in porn,” a voice said, a little hoarser than memory would have it, but otherwise utterly familiar down to the accent.

“Bucky?” Steve breathed.

“Yeah, Stevie,” Bucky whispered, and lay down on top of him, over the covers, taking his face in both hands-- one cold flesh, the other slightly-warm metal. “Hey,” Bucky said, and pressed his mouth to Steve’s, kissing him with firm open-mouthed sureness.

Steve made a startled sound, but Bucky swallowed it down, and kissed him hard and deep until Steve was panting for breath. “Jesus fuckin’ Christ,” Steve said.

Bucky laughed. “I figured you’d like that.”

“Bucky,” Steve said.

“I got it right, yeah?”

“What?” Steve tried to sit up at that, weirdly uncertain amid all the physical manifestations of sureness, but Bucky shoved him back down.

“C’mon,” Bucky said, and yanked the covers out from between them, and Christ, Bucky was naked, and damp. He’d been in the shower. He was— his body slid warm and taut against Steve’s, a hand gliding up Steve’s flank and the other hand catching his jaw again.

“Oh holy—“ Steve said, or tried to say, and Bucky was kissing him again. Oh, God, his body was— it was different, heavier and thicker and smoother and not quite as he remembered, but there was something in his proportions, in his scent, in the movement of his mouth, in the curve of his throat— it was so familiar Steve could have wept. “Bucky.”

“Yeah,” Bucky said, “yeah, Stevie,” and his hands were sure and knowing on Steve’s body, lighting him up, waking nerves to a tingle in long-untouched ways. Whole parts of his brain Steve never used anymore came sparking to life, bright and luminous, and Steve rolled them in the too-big bed, coming to rest against that familiar body, losing himself in the familiar scent and taste of him.

He smelled of metal and a faint hint of explosive residue, but he was unmistakably himself, and Steve wrapped his hand around both their dicks, and Bucky groaned into his mouth, familiar and jarring.

“Stevie,” he moaned, “God, let me—“

“Buck,” Steve panted, and Bucky bit his shoulder, then shoved away from him, pushing him down onto his back, and crawled down the bed. “Where are you— hnngh!”

Bucky grabbed his dick and took it into his mouth, and Steve rapidly lost what little capacity for thought he’d had. Bucky took him apart expertly, with a mix of every one of his old techniques that left Steve putty in his hands. Steve came so hard he forgot how to breathe, and when he was next aware of his own body he had tears streaming down his face and Bucky was in his arms, petting him and kissing his face and murmuring to him.

“Hey, hey, pretty baby,” Bucky crooned, “it’s all right, baby, I gotcha.”

“Bucky,” Steve sobbed, and bit down on it, trying to reel himself back in. “Oh Bucky. C’mere. Oh Bucky. I never— I missed you so goddamn much.”

“They told me you were dead,” Bucky said, kissing his neck, and thumbing the tears away from his cheek. “I’d’a come back for you if I thought there was anything to come back to.”

“I should’ve looked for you,” Steve sobbed, giving up on self-control. “I never should’ve left you.”

“Don’t start that,” Bucky said, tender and sweet. “Don’t, Stevie baby, don’t. What’s done is done.”

“What they did to you,” Steve managed, and Bucky kissed him then, sweet and reassuring.

“It wasn’t so bad,” Bucky said. “I been okay, Steve. I kept busy.”

Steve laughed bitterly, but there was no point, and he rolled them over again. “Let me take care of you,” he said, taking Bucky’s face between his hands, cradling that familiar jaw, those cheekbones, too sharp now, kissing that mouth.

“I’m all right,” Bucky said. “You know doin’ it to you is enough for me, usually.” But he wasn’t kissing Steve any less enthusiastically than before, and Steve managed to snake his hand down between them, and Bucky was mostly hard all right, and got the rest of the way there quick enough.

“Oh,” Bucky said, then. “I see. I forgot, you’re a miracle of science now.”

“Well,” Steve said, and he was already halfway there just from the sheer excitement, “so are you, now.”

“I’m the Fist of Hydra,” Bucky said, sounding a bit smug about it, and he was such a goddamn wiseass, and Steve was mostly beyond speech. He managed to get Bucky off first, and Bucky always made the most gorgeous noises at climax, God, he was so beautiful. Steve followed him over the edge pretty soon, and the post-sex high was pretty great. He floated on a kind of blissful cloud, drifting with a satisfied haziness he hadn’t experienced in a great many years.

He found himself playing idly with Bucky’s hair, running his fingers through it, working out damp tangles. Bucky’d worn his hair short his entire life, but sometimes there had been enough length to it to show the natural wave of it. Mostly he’d kept it styled, too, unwelcoming for idle fingers, but now it was loose and long, and Steve realized the tight feeling in his chest was that he wanted to cry.

“I missed you,” he said quietly. “I just— I missed you so much.”

“Aw,” Bucky said, and nuzzled into Steve’s shoulder. He was a natural-born snuggler, Steve had always thought, but had rarely given into the impulse, at least with Steve. “I— I got some gaps, I don’t remember everything, but I remember when they told me you were dead. It was pretty rough, Steve.”

“I’m sorry,” Steve said.

“Don’t get upset,” Bucky said. “Don’t ruin the moment.”

Steve laughed. “I’m not ruining any moments,” he said, and kissed Bucky’s forehead. But it had gotten him thinking. “Who knows you’re here?”

“My— they’re not my handlers anymore,” Bucky said. “My people. They knew I was looking for you. I didn’t tell ‘em where you were, though. I figured it out on my own, Stevie.”

“Your people,” Steve said, chilled to the core.

“Yeah,” Bucky said. “We had— kind of a shakeup. Things are pretty different.” He sounded cheerful. “Most of the people I hated, you killed, so thanks for that. The ones left are a whole lot more reasonable.”

“You still work for Hydra,” Steve said.

“Well,” Bucky said. “Yeah. I mean. Somebody had to patch me up after all that disaster. I knew your people would come for you, but it took me a while to find somebody who I could go to.”

“You could’ve come to me,” Steve said.

“You were half-dead in a hospital,” Bucky said. “I don’t— I did that, didn’t I? I probably hurt you pretty bad.”

“Well,” Steve said, “I didn’t feel like it was really your choice to do it.”

“I didn’t… have a lot of say in my missions,” Bucky said. “I do now, though. It’s a lot better. It’s— it’s not like it was.”

“You don’t have to go back to them,” Steve said. “You could stay with me.”

“You work for SHIELD,” Bucky said.

Steve didn’t answer. The silence stretched out for a couple minutes. Bucky’s heartbeat had slowed down, not as quickly as Steve’s had. Bucky’s body ran cooler than Steve’s, even now. Steve had worked all the tangles out of Bucky’s hair, and it was drying, silky and cool under his fingers.

“SHIELD is just as rotten as it was before,” Bucky said. “I’d heard that you tore the whole thing down and it was gonna be gone, and I was glad. But it’s back. And it’s worse than it was, maybe, because now it’s hardliners, Steve. It’s the fanatics. It’s the worst of them, and they’re all convinced they’re heroes. They all think they’re different.”

“I mostly work for the Avengers,” Steve said.

“That’s Stark, which is worse,” Bucky said. “He’s dangerous and uncontrollable and also personally hates me, and I can’t blame him for that, I was under some pretty bad management at the time and undeniably did him wrong, but you know, Howard was the same way. They weren’t wrong, he had to be stopped.”

“Who are you working for who’s so much better than all of those?” Steve asked, giving up on arguing about Stark, who was kind of… it wasn’t that he was indefensible, it was just that Bucky wasn’t wrong either.

“They’re still calling themselves Hydra,” Bucky said, “but… it’s pretty different now.”

“I feel like if they still use that name then they can’t really be all that different,” Steve said. “I mean, it’s kind of— they were Nazis, Buck. And they— I don’t know how many gaps you got in your memory, but they did some pretty terrible things to you, Bucky.”

“They did terrible things to _you_ , Steve,” Bucky said. He pulled away from Steve, sitting up and pushing his hair back. He reached over and turned the bedside light on. He was magnificent, gloriously magnificent, and the only thing to spoil it slightly was the fact that his hair was extremely fluffy from Steve’s attentions, floofing out around his shoulders like a dark lion’s mane.

“I volunteered,” Steve said. “It’s an important distinction.”

Bucky tilted his head. “And I was conscripted by the so-called good guys,” he said. “So, I mean. Draw your line somewhere. Both of our organizations were rotten. Both of them have to rebuild in the wake of that. If you think yours is doing it right, you should maybe take another look.” He scraped his fingers through his hair, and raised the metal arm to catch it back in a handful. The metal arm was shockingly bright, even in the dim light, and gleamed like bright silver. But what caught Steve’s eye was the brutal-looking scar tissue where the metal met skin, all around the line of Bucky’s shoulder, under his arm, biting into his chest. It looked horrible, and fresh, like it had been continually re-injured.

He couldn’t stop himself, he reached out to touch, and ran his fingers delicately along the join. Bucky shivered all over, and then went still, not quite looking at Steve, eyes unfocused and lips parted.

“Bucky,” Steve whispered, shifting closer. “Stay with me.”

Bucky shut his eyes. “Don’t,” he said softly. “Steve, don’t. I just— my whole life, Steve. It’s always been you. I’ve always— chosen you. Don’t—“

“Just come in,” Steve said.

“No,” Bucky said. He opened his eyes. “And that’s that, Steve. Are we gonna fight over this? I’ll kick your ass, being naked won’t slow me down one bit. You know they let me do this mission because I was supposed to recruit you.”

“Are you going to?” Steve asked. “Was that your pitch?”

“It wasn’t a very sincere pitch,” Bucky admitted. “I don’t want ‘em to get you. But I don’t think you ought to work for Stark either.”

“If it helps, he works for me,” Steve said.

“He doesn’t, though,” Bucky said. “You’re like— did you ever read about how the war ended, Steve? You know, our war?”

“I did,” Steve said. “I kind of wanted to know, y’know?”

Bucky laughed. “Yeah. Well. The Japanese Emperor. You’re like him. You— Steve, you gotta work that out.”

“Says the man who wants me to let him walk back out of here and go work for Hydra,” Steve said.

“Yup.” Bucky slipped out of the bed, and Steve had to sit up and stare at him. He was just— he was beautiful, all smooth lines and sleek muscle, an amped-up version of the familiar body Steve had grown up seeing as the example of normal and everything he wasn’t.

“You’re really going,” Steve said.

“You’re not stopping me,” Bucky answered.

“You sure about that?” Steve asked, weighing his chances. It was a detached cabin. And he wasn’t afraid to slam through a wall naked. He didn’t have his shield, and Bucky had the arm, but he figured he had the edge even then. Being naked wouldn’t slow him down near as much as Bucky seemed to think it would; he’d left shyness behind long ago.

“Yup,” Bucky said, and bent smoothly to produce a pistol from somewhere near the foot of the bed.

“Shit,” Steve said, and dived, but the dart hit him unerringly in the neck, and everything went blurry. When he woke, it was still dark, and he was still naked, but he was lying in his bed and— yep, the sheets had been stripped off, and the bed remade with military precision with clean new ones that he’d been carefully tucked into.

 

 

 

Steve absently threw the deadbolt behind him as he sorted through his mail with the other hand. He flipped the lightswitch, but the lights in his apartment only came on dimly. He glanced up, frowning, then remembered— Christmas lights, right, Sharon had insisted he decorate. So he’d put up like eight strings of Christmas lights because they were so damn cheap and efficient nowadays, and had unplugged his lamp to do it.

Well.

Holiday cheer and whatnot. That was all he’d done. He wasn’t having glittery crap in his house. It was hard enough to avoid as it was.

He had to remember to care, when people asked. It was, you know. It was all right.

It did mean a sharp uptick in conservative pundits who asked him pointed questions about the good old days. Which meant a sharp uptick in the public rants he got to go on about public health and social wellness and so on. Good times. (Actually, those were probably his favorite self-indulgence, those rants. People acted so shocked.)

Happy fuckin’ holidays. He went into his kitchenette and flipped the other lightswitch, so he could properly read his mail, and went through it— he didn’t get a lot of real mail here, mostly bills and junk. The fanmail got filtered through the Avengers, and sent in thick repackaged envelopes like— yep, like this one. That’d do, he was set for the evening with one of those. He did answer almost all of them. It was one of the few things that was genuinely satisfying.

He set the envelope aside, dumped the rest into his recycle bin, and then he noticed the dark red droplet in the middle of the doorway to the hall, distinct in splatter pattern against the pale wood.

He’d been at the office. He’d been doing paperwork. He was absolutely not bleeding. He moved to the hallway and bent to swipe his finger through the droplet.

It was not dry. It was tacky, but not dry.

It was also absolutely blood.

There was another droplet farther down the hall.

The shield was leaning against the couch. He tended to leave it weird places in the house. He was fastidious about some things, but the shield was kind of… out in the world he was careful. In his own house, no. He caught it up and slunk down the hall.

There was a smear on the bathroom door, which was ajar; he usually left it open. He shoved it all the way open and sprang through.

There was a body in his tub, one heavy-booted foot slung over the side, the black-clad figure within slumped down. As he slammed into the room it rolled its head and looked up at him, pale-faced through dark hair.

“Bucky,” he said, and started to lower the shield until he remembered the last time he’d seen that face, and the gun in the right hand.

“Hey,” Bucky said, head tipped back against the edge of the tub. He looked ghastly, ashen-white, drawn-faced, sunken-cheeked. He had the metal arm clutched tight against his side.

He’d clearly been shot. His shirt, black as it was, was still clearly soaked through with blood, and there was blood smeared all along the edge of the bathtub.

“Jesus Christ,” Steve said, and lowered the shield then, setting it down next to the toilet and yanking the first aid kit out from under the sink.

“Nope,” Bucky said. “Just me.” His breathing was labored. The drain was open, and the area around it was all full of blood.

“Where is it,” Steve asked, gauze packets in one hand. He hovered, uncertain of where to start.

“It’s fine,” Bucky said. He waved the right hand airily, as if they were discussing the weather. “I just came to make a report.”

“You’re bleeding,” Steve said.

“I do that a lot,” Bucky said. “Listen. I gotta— you’re the closest thing left to a commanding officer I really got. I kinda— there was a situation, okay?”

“What happened?” Steve asked.

“You mean, in general, or like, lately?” Bucky rolled the back of his head against the side of the tub, staring hazily at nothing. He’d clearly lost a lot of blood. You had to deal with shit like that, even with super soldiers, Steve had learned. No matter how amped your super-serum was, there were sheer physics involved in blood volume that no amount of efficiency of blood pressure regulation could counteract.

“I guess I mean lately,” Steve said.

“I gotta make my full mission report to you,” Bucky said. “But I could just start with the end. Your people were rotten, Steve, but so were mine.”

“I,” Steve said, and stopped. “Yeah,” he said, softer, “we’ve had kind of— a reorganization on our end too.”

“Thank fuckin’ God,” Bucky said. “I can’t— Steve, I can’t do it anymore. I gotta give you the full report. Hang on. I just. I need.”

“Stop,” Steve said. “Stop trying to talk.” Bucky had peeled open his own jacket at some point, so Steve yanked the sides apart and pulled up Bucky’s torn shirt and hissed at the torn skin there, at the mess of Bucky’s flesh where a close-range gunshot had blasted him straight through whatever body armor he’d been wearing.

“Don’t,” Bucky said, but didn’t move at all to resist him. His head lolled, like an unstrung marionette. He was pretty badly off.

“I gotta stop the bleeding,” Steve said.

“I’m fine,” Bucky said. “I just gotta finish my report. All I need. Then I can. I can rest, Steve.”

“I don’t think you can finish your report,” Steve said, shoving gauze into the wound; he’d learned that disinfecting things never really mattered for him, and if that wasn’t the case for Bucky he’d just have to deal with that as it came up. Bucky had to be pretty hard to kill, from as much as Steve had read in that file.

“I just want,” Bucky said, lolling as Steve hauled him upright— Christ, he was heavy, he was heavier than a human should be— to check and yes, there was an exit wound, that was where all the blood was coming from, God, what a mess. It wasn’t the harsh shit-stink of a gut wound but it wasn’t good either. “I just want to rest, Stevie.”

“I understand,” Steve said, “God, Bucky, of course I understand.”

“I’m so tired,” Bucky said. “I’m trying to make my report and I can’t— I’m sorry—“

“Stop talking,” Steve said. “Rest, then report.”

“No one knows,” Bucky tried, then stopped, breathing hard; Steve had hurt him, wadding gauze into the exit wound and yanking a bandage to hold the dressing in place. “Agh. Steve!”

“I’m sorry, baby,” Steve said, and he’d never called Bucky sweet names, he’d never dared to. Those sorts of things had come naturally to Bucky. Never to Steve. Steve wouldn’t know how to be sweet if it were life and death. He just didn’t have it in him. He could only be abrasive, only knew how to push, only knew how to test people. He didn’t know how to be nice.

“I’m so tired,” Bucky said, and he was crying, and Steve had to stop what he was doing to hold Bucky instead, wrap arms around him and tug him close.

“I know,” Steve said. “So am I, Buck. So am I.”

“I just want it all to go away,” Bucky said, and sobbed, and Steve held him, as tender as he knew how to be.

“I got you now,” Steve said. It must hurt like the dickens. He knew pretty recently what a through-and-through like that felt like. It was awful. And Bucky had gotten here with it. Who knew how long ago he’d been shot, or how far he’d run, losing blood the whole while.

Bucky held on, breath hitching as he fought for control. “Yeah,” he said finally, “all right, I can make my report.”

“Save your strength,” Steve said. He put his hand gently over the wound dressing, to feel if Bucky was bleeding through it, but the bleeding was sluggish. “We gotta get you stabilized. Then you can talk.”

“Let me finish my report,” Bucky said, soft, “then I can let go. You don’t gotta stabilize me.”

“I can’t let you go,” Steve said; he’d been afraid that’s what Bucky meant. And lord, but he could sympathize. He closed his eyes, and cradled Bucky’s jaw in his hand. “I can’t let you go, Buck.”

“I done so much bad shit,” Bucky said. “I don’t— I can’t be in nice places with good people, I can’t even be near you, Steve. I done so much bad shit.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Steve said, and pulled him in to embrace him again. “It doesn’t— Bucky, you’ve been so goddamn loyal your whole life, you’ve only ever tried to protect the things you believed in and the people you loved. I can’t— even if we don’t agree on what that is, it doesn’t make you a bad person.”

“I was wrong,” Bucky said. “I was— they were bad. I thought your people were bad but— Steve, my people— they were worse. I should never have doubted you like that, but I didn’t— you were gone, Steve, I had to go with the next-best thing.”

“Shh,” Steve said, smoothing his hand along Bucky’s shoulders. “Shh. Stop trying to talk. I need you to hold on for me. I need you to stop bleeding and lie still and get better for me.”

“Okay,” Bucky whispered. “Okay.”

 

It took a couple of hours to get him bandaged and cleaned up enough to get him out of the tub. But eventually, Steve was sitting in his living room with Bucky on his couch, dressed in Steve’s warmest pajamas, wrapped in blankets, ice packs on his wounds, hot water bottle on his feet, a saline IV from Steve’s private stash, and a big warm mug of tea to get him through it. Steve sat with Bucky’s head in his lap, finger-combing the tangles out of his soft hair, and looked at the Christmas lights and thought about what a hard road was ahead of them. Some of the information in the report Bucky was still brokenly, occasionally trying to give him implicated some of the new SHIELD as being pretty interwoven with some of the new HYDRA. There was going to be a lot to do.

But Bucky had agreed to stay, and Steve was pretty sure that alone was enough to make any amount of work worth doing.


End file.
